IPCC warnings about African crops also bogus

posted at 9:30 am on February 15, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Another key element of the IPCC report on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) turns out to be based on deliberate decisions to use the most hysterical claims by advocates rather than on science. The IPCC warnings of the African crop projections have a more demonstrably corrupt basis, as the report deliberately ignored actual science that showed little risk of crop yields — science funded by the British government at a cost of over £2.5 million. Who compiled the IPCC Synthesis that ignored peer-reviewed science for the speculation of one Moroccan activist, whose report didn’t even agree with its cited sources? Rajendra Pachauri’s own business — and he got over £400,000 for the work:

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for “carbon credits”. As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. The nearest any got to providing evidence for his claim was one for the Moroccan government, which said that in serious drought years, cereal yields might be reduced by 50 per cent. The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, “agricultural production will more than double by 2020″. Yet it was Agoumi’s claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC’s Working Group II report in 2007.

What made this even odder, however, was that the group’s co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC’s 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by “up to 30 per cent”.

British taxpayers poured out money for the section of the IPCC report for which Dr Parry was responsible. Defra paid £2.5 million through the Met Office, plus £330,000 for Dr Parry’s salary as co-chairman, and a further £75,000 to his consultancy for two more reports on the impact of global warming on world food supplies. Yet when it came to the impact on Africa, all this peer-reviewed work – including further expert reports by Britain’s Dr Mike Hulme and Dutch and German teams – was ignored in favour of a prediction from one Moroccan activist at odds with his own cited sources.

However, the story then got worse when Dr Pachauri himself came to edit and co-author the IPCC’s Synthesis Report (for which the IPCC paid his Delhi-based Teri institute, out of the £400,000 allocated for its production). Not only did Pachauri’s version again give prominence to Agoumi’s 50 per cent figure, but he himself has repeated the claim on numerous occasions since, in articles, interviews and speeches –such as the one he gave to a climate summit in Potsdam last September, where he boasted he was speaking “in the voice of the world’s scientific community”.

In the other IPCC scandals, Pachauri took the blame because he ran the organization. However, in this case, Pachauri played a key role in disseminating erroneous claims, at the very least. He not only included a false claim on the affect of AGW on crop yields — a key argument that Pachauri himself continues to use — but he ignored peer-reviewed science in favor of these hysterical claims.

How many other such decisions still remain in the IPCC reports? We know that one of the IPCC’s most important think tanks, the East Anglia CRU, threatened to redefine “peer review” to keep such contradictory evidence out of the AGW reports. This “hide the lack of decline” moment is nothing more than that impulse put into process by Pachauri himself. If he had no problem ignoring science in this case, then it’s not too difficult to imagine that he made the same decision on other parts of the IPCC report.

The Washington Post reports today on the discrediting of the IPCC, but curiously doesn’t mention any of the reporting done this weekend by the British press about Dr. Phil Jones’ admissions or this part of the African crop lies. It does, however, include this strange passage, buried at the end, emphasis mine:

And Christopher Field — co-chair of the second working group for the IPCC’s next assessment — said the panel needs to improve its fact-checking, even if it means enlisting report contributors’ students to help do the job.

“My goal is to produce a report that’s 100 percent error-free, to the maximum extent possible,” he said. “The fact that the IPCC runs on volunteer labor makes it a challenge, but it’s too important a challenge to ignore.”

Volunteer labor? Pachauri got almost a million dollars to write that IPCC synthesis. He wants the AGW gravy train to continue; small wonder he ignored the science in favor of the hysteria. We’re not talking typos here, but major claims that turn out to be bogus, based not on science but on speculation from AGW advocates and approved by people with financial interest in maintaining the hysteria.

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Comments

Lies, lies and More LIES from the AGW crowd!
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Yesterday I watched FNS as Ceci Connolly and Juan Williams defended AGW extremism and future efforts to mitigate human activity on earth. I realized at that moment that the liberals will never give this up willingly. They will push it and assert it and make it doctrine if necessary so that they can tax the hell out of any business and any taxpayer for their redistribution of wealth schemes.
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Apparently reason, evidence and unreliable data mean nothing to them. These liberals are the ones now exhibiting “denier” and “flat-earther” behavior, all in the name of the AGW “religion” professed by its chief enabler, The Goreacle, also a key White House adviser on climate scams.

But even if they can prove these guys were faking it, it’s still an uphill battle. They weren’t engaging in fraudulent practices to sell anything. Even the carbon credits. The carbon credits, unfortunately, work as advertised.

misterpeasea on February 15, 2010 at 10:24 AM

But they were engaging in fraudulent practices to gain monetarily and enhance their positions.

However, the Telegraph reports today that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and who is considered the top climate scientist in the world, has a wide portfolio of business interests that rely on AGW hysteria:

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists’ follow-the-money methods right back at them.

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he’d been awarded in the 1990s.

It may be hard to prosecute..but we certainly have more than enough reasons to try…..

Scientist intentionally falsified data to push their agenda which in the end put billions of dollars in their “research”……

Algore doesn’t live in Knoxville, his palatial manor is much nearer to Nashville. He hasn’t won a statewide election here since the ’80s, he lost the state in’00. Neyland stadium no longer holds 107,000 people, it was downsized to approximately 102,000 to make room for bigger skyboxes. Get your facts straight. :)

The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.
The Information Commissioner’s Office decided that UEA failed in its duties under the Act but said that it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late, The Times has learnt. The ICO is now seeking to change the law to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach.

Baxter Greene on February 15, 2010 at 10:14 AM

I just think Dr. Zero has a point that we must try.
The people are much more enraged about this overseas becasue they have already been taxed to death and “green guilted” to death.

All of the major reporting on this has come from overseas…the only reporting here is a defense of global warming here and there.

I think they will push very hard for legal actions and we should join them in this.

Will anybody take a perp walk…maybe not.
But I agree with Dr. Zero that the credibility of science in the future may depend on this being exposed and dealt with on an international stage.

They could start by having these Nobel Peace prizes recended that have been given out for this Global Warming Hoax….

If your State University or the FED gave a grant to a researcher who made a false claim, you can sue to recover the money recieved by fraud. The AG of your State or the FED has the “option” of pursuing the claim. If they do and they recover monies, you get a percentage. If they do not, you can continue the suit on their behalf. If you recover monies, you get a higher percentage and legal fees.

The challenge is the legal fees are high and many firms will not take the case. I am willing to contribute to “sue the AGW out of them fund.”

Interesting – I wonder how one goes about filing suit against this Indian nitwit and the IPCC and Al Gore, etc…

Midas on February 15, 2010 at 10:10 AM

As you imply, getting fraud charges against Gore et al. will require some groundwork.

The first priortity is to debunk the ‘science’ of AGW, which has been shielded from scrutiny by leftist media. How to pierce the shield? Litigation is the only effective way I know to bust the story out over the heads of media and into the public domain. Once that’s done, public outrage will facilitate many other actions, including eventually prosecutions on the grounds of fraud.

For openers, we need Freedom of Information suits, and participation in Katrina-like AGW suits in re the issue of causation. (Please see Doc Zero’s Resolving the Global Warming Fraud and my comment).
We also need to apply political pressure on our state AG’s and legislatures to adopt measures that will enable court challenges, sometimes involving issues of states’ rights.

But at the beginning, the issue underlying almost all of the litigation, in whatever form it takes, is causation. The issues we will be litigating: 1) Did global warming cause the plaintiff’s damages.
2)Was defendant’s behavior (e.g. carbon emmissions) a cause of the global warming?

We need a broad array of court attacks, coming from a broad array of stakeholders, to bring sunshine to the theory and evidence of AGW. The point to drive home: Even iff there is global warming and even if global warming caused the phenomenon that damaged plaintiff’s property (and these issues are not conceded), man’s contribution to global warming is insignificant.

Once the theory and science of AGW is debunked, we can move on to litigation aimed at accountability and deterrance. Here’s where the fraud suits begin.

If your State University or the FED gave a grant to a researcher who made a false claim, you can sue to recover the money recieved by fraud. The AG of your State or the FED has the “option” of pursuing the claim. If they do and they recover monies, you get a percentage. If they do not, you can continue the suit on their behalf. If you recover monies, you get a higher percentage and legal fees.

barnone on February 15, 2010 at 11:11 AM

Excellent! I had no idea. Is this a state thing or a fed thing that’s operative in all 57 states?

Finding foundations to finance this sort of challenge ought to be a piece of cake.

We’re not talking typos here, but major claims that turn out to be bogus, based not on science but on speculation from AGW advocates and approved by people with financial interest in maintaining the hysteria.

What our MSM, and even the UK media, seem to be avoiding is the direct impact this latest scandal should be visiting upon the United Nations. Rajendra Pachauri is to the IPCC global warming scandal what Benan Sevan was to the bribe-driven Oil-For-Food program (supposedly benefiting civilian Iraqi’s).

It has become readily apparent that the UN is incapable, as a global “force for good”, of managing any such programs due to an inability to simultaneously monitor and police any programs so heavily funded by member states. And the lavish expenditures by the UN are a wasteful burden, especially for the United States, which will become extremely difficult to justify after this latest scam is fully exposed.

The only thing not driving the IPCC-AGW scandal story throughout our own MSM is most likely because President Obama was counting on the UN’s IPCC and its 2007 report to support his energy policies, especially should he try again to get Congress to vote on Cap and Trade legislation. Plus, the progressive faction of the MSM looks upon the United Nations as one of the primary vehicles for furtherance of a global socialist agenda.

The challenge is the legal fees are high and many firms will not take the case. I am willing to contribute to “sue the AGW out of them fund.”

barnone on February 15, 2010 at 11:11 AM

I think that fund would become huge overnight.

Liberals have spent years calling everybody that disagreed with their eco-fundamentalist rants a bunch of “flat earthers”,”idiots”,”right wing nuts”..on…and..on… and.. on while none of their predictions come true and their so called “scientific consensus ” comes crashing down around them.

You can bet right now the leftist sheep are sitting around waiting on Media Matters and Huffington post to deliver their talking points to them.

They will sound as crazy and ignorant as their “Obama won the Iraq war” theme.

Yea…let’s get these liberal cultist into court,making Al Gore the first one on the stand.

Due to the poor economy around here, there weren’t many sellouts, I haven’t looked this up, but I understand several games only had about 85k people attending. I can’t find official numbers, but it looks like the average attendance was below 100K for the ’09 season :( Now if this isn’t a threadjacking I don’t know what is!

But you still need a cause of action to get into court. All this lying and deceiving didn’t cost any money, directly.

misterpeasea on February 15, 2010 at 10:52 AM

Yeah…court for what? The only ones at risk of anything are the scientist-professors who have falsified or withheld data, and they are only at risk of discredit. Hell, most of them won’t even lose their jobs, since their jobs are controlled by like-minded leftists.

The notion that increasing CO2 which plants such as crops thrive on, would DECREASE crop production is but one of the many lunacies and delusions in leftwing AGW hysterics. I’m glad this house of cards has collapsed and its credibility lies in shambles before we did great damage to our economy and the economy of Western Europe.

Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda. “Some researchers said the U.N. panel’s attitude — appearing to promise that its results were infallible, and reacting slowly to evidence that they were not — could undermine the rest of its work.”

….now let me get this straight……

Sarah Palin writes a few notes on her hand and is branded an “idiot” and “unworthy of holding any political office”,a “hypocrite” and a “fraud”….

Global scientist around the world are shown to have falsified data,cherry picked results,stifled dissent,and threw away their “research data”…….

……….and the WaPo refers to this as “missteps” and “could undermine the rest of its work.”

Every single person of authority that was , and are compliant with this fraud, needs to be rounded up, arrested, and charged.

Billions have been put into this, and billions would have been made. That’s enough evidence for police to suspect a spouse of murder, when life insurance policies come into play. Greed plays a HUGE role in this, and they are all suspect because of it.

Yes, and what ever happened to Sevan, by the way? Is he living in a jail somewhere? Or in a villa.

Agree with everything you say, just not optimistic the UN and it’s elites will feel any consequences.

petefrt on February 15, 2010 at 11:40 AM

Sevan and the Oil-For-Food Program scandal has obviously been swept under the rug, I’m afraid. The Pachauri/IPCC-AGW scandal is too high profile for that to happen this time, though. Still, there are way too many major personalities and countries heavily invested in the theory of AGW, financially. Britain especially has already enacted taxes and fees and restrictive legislation that have negatively impacted their economy and employment.

It will be most interesting to see just how this all not only unravels, but how those major personalities and those countries backpedal and undo the devastating damage to civilians both economically and morally. Within the United States, California is the stepchild of this movement, related legislation, taxes and fees, are all part of what has driven that state to the brink of bankruptcy.

All of it, bottom line, was an issue of control and power: Power to control the masses of unwashed civilians, under the auspices of saving the planet from human destruction. Yet it was nothing more than just another vehicle for progressive control over ordinary, hard-working civilians, their actions, their property, and especially their money.

But there were hundreds of scientists who are part of the IPCC and signed off on the report.

That makes the entire report “scientifically true” which apparently is different from factually true; to disbelieve this just because it is demonstrably false using math and data and stuff makes you a science denier, unpatriotic, and stupid.

I’m pretty sure that summarizes what I’ve learned from being cynical about the AGW claims for the past decade. Factual evidence is useless, only ever listen to a majority of scientists regardless of the data.

I’m pretty sure this holds true even when there is no data and the claim was a spurious one made with no logic, reasoning, data, or basis for the claim.

Guy actualy used surface stations and looked at the amount of Energy being absorbed by the atmosphere… and found that even though CO2 increased, the amount of ENERGY being absorbed was CONSTANT.

Romeo13 on February 15, 2010 at 10:49 AM

Not surprising. CO2 only absorbs infrared light in two narrow wavelength bands, and within those bands, it absorbs practically all the energy available. Increasing the CO2 concentration wouldn’t make new energy available–the same energy would be absorbed closer to the earth, but convection currents would distribute the energy higher in the atmosphere.

Of course, it’s GREAT to have experimental evidence, rather than just theory, to prove that additional CO2 in the atmosphere does NOT increase the energy absorbed.

It is way past time for us to have a name with a positive connotation rather than denier and sceptic. Is also past time for the scammers to have a negative connotation name. Someone with a facility with words should come up with something catchy which we can all use. Maybe, HotAir could have a contest.

Katy bar he door! Once they start actually looking at the AGW claims with a jaundiced eye it is going to be a landslide. Think that all these exagerrated claims for AGW stood unchallenged because no one in the press or positions of power wanted to oppose the Mass Media and say “Wait a minute are you sure?” Now fame comes from being the first to rat out a bad claim. Reminds me of the end of WWII when the various Germans realized it was time to answer for what people did and why they did it.